SYRACUSE — Franciscan Companies has opened a new continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) patient-service center in the New York Heart Center, its first location in a cardiology office. Franciscan Companies already operated Syracuse–area CPAP patient-service centers, which offer therapies to treat sleeping disorders like sleep apnea, in pulmonary offices in Syracuse and Clay. But sleeping […]
SYRACUSE — Franciscan Companies has opened a new continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) patient-service center in the New York Heart Center, its first location in a cardiology office.
Franciscan Companies already operated Syracuse–area CPAP patient-service centers, which offer therapies to treat sleeping disorders like sleep apnea, in pulmonary offices in Syracuse and Clay. But sleeping disorders aren’t just connected to the lungs and respiratory-tract issues addressed by pulmonologists, according to Timothy Scanlon, executive vice president of Franciscan Companies. They are also linked to cardiology, which deals with the heart.
“Historically, we’ve been in pulmonary centers,” Scanlon says. “But patients who have sleep apnea often develop other complications as a result of having sleep apnea. They don’t sleep well. They tend to have, as a result of that, some metabolic disorders — hypertension, diabetes, obesity.”
The new CPAP center opened Aug. 6. It is open to patients of the New York Heart Center as well as walk-in patients.
The center connects patients to respiratory therapists. Those therapists can use a CPAP machine to treat disorders like sleep apnea, which occurs when a sleeper’s breathing stops and restarts. CPAP machines use air pressure to open airways.
Franciscan Companies leases about 300 square feet of space from the New York Heart Center in suite 300 at 1000 E. Genesee St. in Syracuse for the CPAP patient-service center. It staffs the patient-service center with three people: two respiratory therapists and an administrator. That’s in line with its other patient-service centers in the area, according to Scanlon.
The workers at the new patient-service center are not new hires. Franciscan Companies shifted them from other locations.
Placing patient-service centers directly in specialists’ offices creates a streamlined experience for patients, Scanlon says. For instance, New York Heart Center, which has 22 physicians, operates a sleep lab at 1000 E. Genesee St., he says. So the new center gives cardiac patients a single place to visit if they need to progress from meeting with a physician to a sleep study in the sleep lab to treatment with a respiratory therapist.
“You bring them in, you diagnose them,” Scanlon says. “[If you can quickly] get them on therapy, hooked up with a respiratory therapist, that’ll be a successful patient. The patient that has to wait, the patient that gets diagnosed and six or seven weeks go by, you really missed the opportunity to get that patient on board.”
The New York Heart Center does not have a direct relationship with Franciscan Companies outside of the CPAP patient-service center. Its doctors do admit patients to St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center in Syracuse, with which Franciscan Companies is affiliated, according to Scanlon. However, the hospital does not own the cardiology practice.
“We’re there solely for the doctors’ and patients’ convenience,” Scanlon says. “The doctor doesn’t have to write an order, fax it over, and see if someone can handle it. It’s face to face.”
St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center pulmonologists host Franciscan Companies’ other CPAP patient-service centers in the Syracuse area. Those centers are located at 945 E. Genesee St. in Syracuse and 7246 Janus Park Drive in Clay. Franciscan Companies also operates a standalone CPAP center at 300 Gateway Park Drive in North Syracuse.
Franciscan Companies, headquartered in suite 100 at 333 Butternut Drive in DeWitt, provides services in 14 upstate New York counties and three Pennsylvania counties. Its services and products include home medical equipment, home-care services, wellness programs, and an adult day center. Franciscan Companies employs 204 people and generated $33 million in revenue in 2011. It estimates its revenue will increase by 10 percent in 2012 to $36 million.
Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com